Forums

Gallery

Everything posted by David Woodin

The Genesis controller has many great features. My experience with it did not end up good and I returned it and they gave me a full refund. As Dick White said they give no information as to what some of there software changes mean to how it will react. I felt like I was doing there testing in the field for them and that this should have been done before it left the factory. I finally gave up when they tried to convince me that the cycling was due to stray coming in on the thermocouple even though I kept telling them the old V6 worked perfectly. I now have an industrial controller that is 100% better and a setup where I can monitor firing on my computer and go back and review firings and just measure how long they take to see if there is a change in element s that require replacing them. I also changed over to solid state relays, no clicking of relays and a much longer life span on SSR"s with a tighter control.
David

First you need to verify what cone each shelf is being fired to. The best way is to use self standing cones. If you decide to use a hold than you also need to change the top temp you fire to. For example if the final ramp to temp. is 120 F than a 10 min hold would subtract 13 F from top temp., a 108 ramp -16 F for 10 min hold. Unfortunately this means writing your own program.
David

From what I can see of the elements, it looks like it could be fired. You can get an appliance cord from Home Depot that will work for the kiln. take a picture of the cord end you now have and see if that matches the Home depot 240 volt appliance cord. You will have to verify what the breaker is for the existing appliance outlet 35 amp is needed. Take a look at the connecting wires in the kiln and they can be replaced with appliance high temp wire available at Home Depot or any store that sells parts for stoves or dryers. The kiln on 240 VAC will draw about 1565 watts instead of the original 1500 watts. The cheapest and best elements can be ordered from Euclids.com, they also carry many parts for kilns. If this scares you then you will have to get someone who repairs kiln's.
David

Cone 6 profile for a Bartlett controller range from slow of 15 hours, medium 7 hrs 37 min , to almost 11 hours, fast 4 hrs 36 min. You may want to measure the resistance of your elements and compare them to Skutts table for elements/
David

I bought a Genesis controller as an upgrade to my Bartlett V6-CF. The first firing with it just did what ever it wanted and overfired everything. I called Bartlett Co. and their Technician was only interested in proving their was nothing wrong with the controller, it was my programing. Finally after firing twice more with just shelves and posts and cones in the kiln I pulled the controller and put the original V6-CF back in and fired a load of pots successfully. Today I called Bartlett to return the controller, and was put thru to Dave Bartlett, he said a lot of upgrades had been made on the firmware and would I put it back in and he would step me thru it. This afternoon I called him again and had put it back in. First I had taken down the information on the controller, He said that was the newest version, and after much talking back and forth of what I was seeing, he said he wanted to check one more thing. He talked me through how to get to the PID and the setting was at 1 he said change it to 18 and he thought that would solve the problem. I am now firing the kiln with shelves and it seems to be following the setpoint like it should. This PID setting in my manual says don't change without askiing the kiln Mfg.
David

If the tip of the cone is not 2" above the clay pat than it would not be reading according to the kiln chart for regular large cones. If the tip is set at 1 3/4" above the clay pat than the selfsupporting cone chart should be used. , these readings are based on 108 F ramp, or 60 C ramp for the last 200 F or 100 C temperature.
David

Joe make sure that the height of the cone is set to 2" above the clay pack and is at the proper angle. An easy way to get the 2 " is that the crossbar of the Orton symbol is exactley 2 " to the tip of the cone and will be at the top of the clay pack.
David

I use an Omega 1/4" diameter Type K, in their High Temperature super Omegeclad protecting tube. Go to www.omega.com, go to temperature than to thermocouple, go to product finder and look at (*) QXL. The one I use is KQXL-14G-7 @$35.00 The -7 is custom and 7 inches long. Standard lenths are 6 ",12",18" I get way over 150 firings, and when they fail it is immediate because of the small gauge wire in the protecting tube.
David

I use one controller for 3 each 2 zone kilns and just plug in the the power to the kiln I want to use and plug in the thermocouples for the kiln I am going to use into the controller . I use the thermocouple plug in connectors from Omega.com. The only draw back is the possibility of forgetting to change the thermocouples. The contoller usually will come up with an error signal of FAIL and shut off the kiln if this happens. I have been using this set up for over 5 years now.
David

I think that you can follow Min"s program by using the first time ramp as a slow ramp from ambient to what will get you to 200 deg F, (2 hours 10 min from ambient of 75 deg F gets to around 200 deg F) than the second time ramp to get you to a temp you will set in the program, than the next two time ramps to get you to the bisque temp you will set in the program. In other words you don't have to use up your 2 setpoints for temperature right away but can use ramp rates to get to blind setpoints.
David

I know it is a bad time to think about your problem, but you are mixing different base glazes together when you double dip. You could probably get the same effect using the same base but changing the colorants. there may be times that you have a Custer base and than a G200 or Nephline Sye base on top of it, for me this would invite trouble. There is no reason why you are stuck with different bases to get what you want. It will require some color testing but both glazes would be compatable.
David

The glaze Al/Si is not in food safe range. Food safe limits developed by John Hesselberth doesn't use Lithium. The glaze as written doesn't add up to 100 %, Dolomite should be 5.6. John Britt on page 111 says do not use on functional surfaces. (Mid range Glazes)
David

Your glaze firing program doesn't agree with the Barlett slow glaze program, the temperature of 2167 F even with a 20 min hold woudln't be cone 6 , some where around cone 5 and cone 5.5. You are getting cone 6 past 90 degree so your kiln must be going very slow. How many hours is the firing? Two of the glazes on the next page are within cone 6 food safe limits. Bright sky blue and Rasberry. So probably your clay is suspect.
David

You could take out the Zinc, it will still have the same AL/SI ratio, but it will be a different glaze and probably fire in the cone 7 range, it may be possible to use a frit to get more fluxing. The new glaze brought up to 100% would be neph sy 56.5, whiting 20.6, EPK 16.9, silica 6.0
David

The glaze you now have is not a cone 6 glaze and you fire to cone 6, to make it a cone 6 glaze you need more silica in the glaze.
You could try a line blend to get the silica into the cone 6 range and keep the AL/Si ratio the same as you now have. The easy way to do a line blend is to mix A and B containers first (about 350 grams batch each
NEPH 180.6 145.6
Whiting 65.8 53.2
Zinc 30.1 24.5
EPK 53.9 89.6
Silica` 19.6 37.5
If You have a 60 cc syringe you squirt the glaze into 7 small cups as follows: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 cups
each cup has this recipe in it
A 96 80 64 48 32 16 0
Nep Sy whiting Zinc EPK Silica B 0 16 32 48 64 80 96
1 51.6 18.8 8.6 15.4 5.6
2 49.9 18.2 8.3 17.1 6.5
3 48.3 17.6 8.1 18.8 7.3
4 46.6 17.9 7.8 20.5 8.2
5 44.9 16.4 7.5 22.2 9
6 43.3 15,8 7.3 23.9 9.9
7 41.6 15.2 7 25.6 10.7
You also could just make the above separated batches. they will start getting into cone 6 range at 3 on. The 20 grid biaxial is a simplified curry blend, but it will have matte to shiney glazes at cone 6. The above line blend will be in the matte range you now like. Sorry for the confusion.
David